They say the pen is mightier than the sword. Learn to wield yours in the most effective way with a new course offered at Hill Center Saturday, Dec. 10 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Michelle LaFrance and Jessica McCaughey will lead Writing at the End of the World course: Writing for Change — Stories, Letters, & One-Pagers for the Hopeful!
The workshop will focus on writing as a “world-building” tool for social change, hope, and community-building. Facilitators will discuss the rhetorical strategies for writing persuasively and strategically in “public” forms such as letters, OpEds, one pagers/brochures, and journalistic stories that seek to make a persuasive case for change.
Participants will produce, share, and revise drafts in the genre of their choice, and leave with a working draft that they can continue to revise. The workshop will end with a discussion of writing for self care, resilience, creative play, and community.
About the Instructors
Michelle LaFrance is a feminist critical ethnographer who teaches courses on community writing, feminist methodologies, writing studies and critical pedagogy. Michelle has published on institutional ethnography, the materialities of academic labor, e-portfolios, e-research and writing center pedagogy. Her current work sees her participating in urban communities, studying discourses of volunteerism and belonging and treating the evolution of research practice and sensibilities in Writing Studies.
In 2021, Dr. LaFrance was awarded the College Composition and Communication Research Impact award for her book, Institutional Ethnography: A Theory of Practice for Writing Studies Researchers (USUP 2019). This book was also awarded “Honorable Mention” in the 2021 Best Book category from the International Writing Across the Curriculum Association.
Jessica McCaughey is an Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program at George Washington University, where she teaches academic and professional writing. In this role, Jessica has developed a growing Workplace Writing Program to help organizations improve the quality of their employees’ writing. She has created and facilitated writing workshops for teams at a variety of organizations, including Amnesty International, DC United, the US Department of Labor, the FDA, the Democracy Fund, and the American Legion, among many others.
Her research focuses primarily on the transfer of writing skills from the academic to the professional realm. Jessica co-founded and co-directs the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences. Her creative writing has appeared in publications like The Best American Travel Writing, The Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and the Fine Arts, and The Rumpus, among many others, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. In her previous life, Jessica worked as a copywriter, editor, and communications manager.
You should bring your first draft if you have one –and you don’t have to have one;, a journal/notebook/pen or lap top; and your most creative self.
Register and get more info here: https://www.hillcenterdc.org/event/writing-at-the-end-of-the-world-writing-for-change-stories-letters-one-pagers-for-the-hopeful/
